Dui Cases Leave Trail Of Anguish

It was just past midnight on a Friday evening when newlyweds Kimberly and Jerome Steele left the Bowery, a bar on Okeechobee Boulevard where they had been drinking with friends for an hour-and-a-half.

Kimberly, 19, slid behind the wheel of their new silver Pontiac Firebird, while Jerome, 22, dropped his seat back to a reclining position. As they began the 10-minute drive to their Lantana home last Oct. 6, Jerome, a construction worker, drifted off to sleep.

He woke up a week later in the intensive care unit of John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital with a cracked skull, four screws holding his left leg together and numerous other injuries. Doctors had given the unconscious young man a slim chance of survival.

His teen-age wife of five months, a bank teller studying to be a nurse, was dead.

On the way home that night, the Firebird had slammed into a clump of trees at the end of Lake Worth Road, where it runs into State Road 441. The impact crumpled the sports car. The Florida Highway Patrol, after testing her blood- alcohol content, ruled Kimberly had been been intoxicated.

Jerome Steele said he couldn`t bring himself to touch alcoholic beverages for a long time after the accident.

``When I lost her, I stopped drinking right away,`` said Steele, who is almost fully recuperated and now lives in Lake Worth. ``I`d try to drink a beer, and it would bring me back to the accident.``

His wife`s parents, he said, ``were wiped out`` by their daughter`s death, which he blames partly on the dangerous intersection. At the time, only a faded stop sign stood there to warn nighttime drivers the road stopped short, he said.

``I regret we went to the bar that night,`` Steele said. ``We were drinking too much.``

Deaths such as Kimberly`s are what Florida lawmakers hoped to prevent when they gave their last-minute approval Thursday to a bill that raises the state`s legal drinking age from 19 to 21.

Legislators, who adjourned Friday, forwarded the bill (CS-SB 1) to Gov. Bob Graham, who is expected to sign it into law. It would take effect July 1.

Although a hike in the drinking age will save some lives, it will barely make a dent in the state`s yearly drunken driving death toll. And it affords little consolation to the families of victims of other, older, drunken drivers.

Rinette and Mitch Hosea have endured for five years the pain of losing their 15-year-old son to a 36-year-old drunken driver.

The boy, a lanky Little Leaguer, had aspirations of coaching a college sports team, his parents say.

Ron`s only complaint in life was ``there just isn`t enough time in the day to do everything,`` said his father, Mitch, an electrician, as he and his wife talked recently in their home west of West Palm Beach.

But time ran out for Ron at age 15, when he was fatally injured in a hit-and- run accident at Belvedere and Drexel roads while walking to batting practice with his best friend.

The ace Little League pitcher had been walking 20 feet off the road when struck he was squarely by the front bumper of a car driven by an intoxicated man. His slender frame was hurled 75 feet from the impact. His friend fared better. The bumper grazed his leg.

Ron died two hours and 20 minutes later in the intensive care unit of St. Mary`s Hospital in West Palm Beach. His injuries included a severed spinal cord and fractured skull.

An off-duty sheriff`s deputy caught the driver, who was eventually convicted of drunken driving. The motorist was so drunk, Mitch said, ``he could hardly stand up.``

The Hoseas, who now care for their two other children, daughters Michelle, 15, and Megan, 4, often show guests their proudest memento of Ron`s brief life: a display case containing a collection of his football and baseball trophies. The awards cover two shelves. One is inscribed to the team member exemplifying ``the most desire.``

Whatever bitterness the Hoseas may still feel is masked in the steadiness and warmth of their voices as they recall snippets of their son`s life. Yet there are, as Rinette puts it, rough spots that open a floodgate of memories.

``On his birthday or the anniversary of his death, it all comes back,`` she said.

Rinette was pregnant with Megan when Ron died. As she began growing up, the little girl often would stop and stare at a picture hanging on the wall of the brother she never knew.

``One day, at age 2, she looked up at the picture and said, `Who`s that?` `` Rinette said. ``We said, `Ronnie.` She said, `Where is he?` ``

Jan O`Brien didn`t lose a loved one to a drunken driver, but her family`s near-miss with one prompted her to join the Palm Beach County chapter of Mother`s Against Drunk Driving, one of the most vocal proponents of raising the state`s drinking age.

The horrifying scene, replayed time and again in her mind, occurred as she, her husband, Richard, and their three sons rode their bicycles home from church one evening in August 1979.